Tuesday, September 30, 2008

When we walked into the community center, they tried to shuffle the kids off to one side to “learn about voting” while an aggressive campaign worker told us to sign-in on a clipboard. When I asked why she needed our phone number, address, and email, she said, “we just want to know how many people attended.” Classic Alinsky organizing. My wife spoke Democrat to them and my kids and I were able to enter without further indoctrination.

Inside, a popular children’s entertainer, Rebecca Frezza, was performing but she had changed all of the lyrics of her songs to, I kid you not, “I Love. Bar-ack Oh-Baaaa-mah.” Most disappointing because my daughters are fans and couldn’t hear the songs the way they knew them.

After that were two speeches by our local NJ assemblywoman and an adviser to Obama’s campaign. Both speeches were about how “amazing” Obama’s convention speech was, how the stadium spectacle brought them to tears, and how they were initially inspired to support Obama by Will-I-Am’s youtube video. I couldn’t make this stuff up. Both speeches ended with some hope-and-change chanting. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a room with 200 sweaty Democrats (adults and kids) chanting “yes we can” but I’d rather reenact the torture scene from Syriana than do that again.

I’m happy to report that my daughters, ages eight and five, caught the creepy stench of group-think in the air and were extremely uncomfortable. My Democrat wife too had to admit that it was a little scary. After we left I bought my kids an ice cream cone to sooth the pain.

There is also a YouTube video of children singing songs of praise and worship to the Messia....I mean Obama.

These are the key findings of the Media Research Center’s exhaustive analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage of Barack Obama — every story, every soundbite, every mention — from his first appearance on a network broadcast in May 2000 through the end of the Democratic primaries in June 2008, a total of 1,365 stories. MRC analysts found that the networks’ coverage — particularly prior to the formal start of Obama’s presidential campaign — bordered on giddy celebration of a political "rock star" rather than objective newsgathering.

Key Findings:

# The three broadcast networks treated Obama to nearly seven times more good press than bad — 462 positive stories (34% of the total), compared with only 70 stories (just 5%) that were critical.

# NBC Nightly News was the most lopsided, with 179 pro-Obama reports (37%), more than ten times the number of anti-Obama stories (17, or 3%). The CBS Evening News was nearly as skewed, with 156 stories spun in favor of Obama (38%), compared to a mere 21 anti-Obama reports (5%). ABC’s World News was the least slanted, but still tilted roughly four-to-one in Obama’s favor (127 stories to 32, or 27% to 7%).

# Barack Obama received his best press when it mattered most, as he debuted on the national scene. All of the networks lavished him with praise when he was keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and did not produce a single negative story about Obama (out of 81 total reports) prior to the start of his presidential campaign in early 2007.

# The networks downplayed or ignored major Obama gaffes and scandals. Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full reports (one each on ABC and NBC) and mentioned in just 15 other stories. CBS and NBC also initially downplayed controversial statements from Obama’s longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright, but heavily praised Obama’s March 18 speech on race relations.

# While Obama’s worst media coverage came during the weeks leading up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, even then the networks offered two positive stories for every one that carried a negative spin (21% to 9%). Obama’s best press of the year came after he won the North Carolina primary on May 6 — after that, 43 percent of stories were favorable to Obama, compared to just one percent that were critical.

# The networks minimized Obama’s liberal ideology, only referring to him as a "liberal" 14 times in four years. In contrast, reporters found twice as many occasions (29) to refer to Obama as either a "rock star," "rising star" or "superstar" during the same period.

# In covering the campaign, network reporters highlighted voters who offered favorable opinions about Obama. Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 (78%) were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 (19%) that had a negative view, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.

Spot the error?

Well, if you wanted to make the case that Obama received preferential treatment during the primaries what would you logically need? A point of comparison maybe? If we could compare Obama's coverage with Clinton's and saw a large discrepancy wouldn't that provide compelling evidence, particularly given the close nature of the contest at hand?

As is, the best this report can be is suggestive of a media fawning over Obama, but it leaves out too much data to be considered conclusive.

Monday, September 29, 2008

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

How much you wanna bet editors all across the country are asking their I/T guys if its possible to see if this "traitor" is in their office?

"Through 90 minutes of debate, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he didn't have anything to say about you," Obama told the cheering 20,000-plus crowd at the J. Douglas Galyon Depot in downtown Greensboro. "He didn't even say the words 'middle class.' He didn't even say the words 'working people.'"

Yeah, maybe its because when McCain talks about "Americans" he doesn't equate that with Ivy League degreed, arugula worried, effete elites. Only Obama has to remind us that he even knows the middle class exists.

I'm not even talking about the lies that have the slightest hint of deniability to them, like Obama's seeming lie that Henry Kissinger supports his plan to hold unconditional talks with Iran's anti-Semite of a President (Kissinger doesn't.) I'm just talking about the bald-faced fabrications. Obama will even lie under the focused light of a debate because he knows the MSM will never question him or point out to the American people that he is lying. Tonight, Obama claimed he never said anything about using American troops in Pakistan. That is a lie. Obama even had the audacity to suggest he wasn't against the troop surge in Iraq.

There is no way the media would allow McCain to get away with whoppers like that.

Friday, September 26, 2008

St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch are threatening to bring libel charges against those who speak out falsely against Barack Obama.

KMOV aired a story last night, that stated that St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, both Obama supporters, are threatening to bring criminal libel charges against anyone who levels what turns out to be false criticisms of their chosen candidate for President.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

“It’s rare for a head of state to take time during an official U.N. visit to meet with the peace community, especially in a situation where the host government —represented by the Bush administration — is so hostile,” said Jodie Evans, co-founder of CODEPINK. “The fact that the meeting took place and was so positive is, in itself, a major step forward.”

Ahmadinejad is an anti-Semite and holocaust denier who has called for the obliteration of the state of Israel. How is coming together with him a "major step" towards anything other than a new "final solution"?

It is scary that these people don't understand any of this. It is also scary that Obama just feted this woman when he was hob-nobbing in Hollywood.

“It is deeply disastrous,” said President Amadinejad, “to witness that some presidential or premiere [sic] nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.”

Who are "these people"? Jews of course.

“This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.”

Read that. Dammit...go reread that. This fucker is Hitler, and Obama wants to act like he's the equivalent of any other leader. It's morally retarded.

I can understand setting certain common sense limits on the type of political activity university faculty may engage in, but the University of Illinois (sadly, one of my alma maters) has gone too far. Under prohibited activity they include:

1) Wearing a pin, bumper sticker or t-shirt in support of the Democratic Party or Republican Party, or a Democratic/Republican candidate.

2) "Attending a rally on University property specific to a political candidate or party - regardless of whether or not you are on University time."

It's outrageous. The university is a public forum and employees of the university have a right to enjoy the same access to that forum as any other citizen, particularly on their own time. Candidates often use university facilities to speak to crowds. To ban faculty from such events is promoting ignorance. Funny, I thought universities were against ignorance?

Sister Toldjah gets a little down about a Rasmussen poll that shows Obama in a statistical tie with McCain in North Carolina. So I went and took a look at the survey to see if she really should be that down. Well, she shouldn't. Here are the first two questions:

1* How do you rate the way that George W. Bush is performing his role as President? Excellent, good, fair, or poor?

2*If the Presidential Election were held today, would you vote for Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama?

Anything strike you as odd? Well, yeah, me too. What the hell is George Bush doing at the top of the survey? I didn't know he was running for anything! Hmmm...that's queer.

Well, actually it isn't. It's called "priming." That is when in polling you ask a question which puts people into a state of mind that influences the way they answer follow-up questions. Obviously, Rasmussen is gonna claim that the George Bush question was merely there to be used in the crosstabs, i.e. various demographic breakdowns of the survey sample responses. But, if you were going to do that why not have the Bush question after the "Were the election held today" question?

It's simple. If you were just interested in getting a snapshot of state's opinion, you would have asked the Bush question later. However, if you wanted to prime your audience, by reminding them of an unpopular President, AND reminding voters in the second question just which candidate is also a Republican, well then you'd put the Bush question first.

Look, these are real things that reputable Political Scientists always keep an eye out for. By and large, they are actually interested in generating the best data possible, so they make sure that lousy question wording or leading question ordering don't contaminate their results. That's what honest people do, because sometimes a survey can get messed up accidently if you don't.

Rasmussen, on the other hand, seem to be unconcerned about such things.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

I know McCain can be criticised on this, but, from the Obama perspective is this hopey-changy? This is the "non-partisan" "reaching across the aisle," "putting the needs of the country first" response?

Obama doesn't even feel the need to hide his hypocrisy.

I guess you can do anything when you mint your own presidential coin in September.

As time goes on it is becoming clearer that the entire premise upon which Anthropogenic Global Warming is based, namely the so-called "Greenhouse Effect," is in fact nonsense. (QandO has a nice post looking at some of the new research concerning a decrease in solar winds and their possible effects on climate.)

My concern here is not the progress of science, but how the press will present the inevitable re-ordering of scientific thought towards actual reality. In other words, what has to happen before the press will acknowledge the AGW hysteria they promoted was dead wrong?

My guess is we will have to wait for this generation of media types to retire.

I'm not joking.

Even if we went into a decades long cooling trend (a possibility given the dearth of sunspot activity), I do not think the media could "give up" on their old beliefs. The reason is obvious. Their original motivations were ideological, not scientific. They wanted to believe in AGW because it confirms their worldview, and presents the liberal/capitalistic political/economic order as the villain. Just as we had old time communists singing the praises of "Good ol' Uncle Joe" even after they were presented the millions of corpses of the gulags, we will find these media types refusing to bow to the actual reality of climate.

I saw this earlier today on another blog, but it wasn't attributed to anything so I didn't post about it, but Patterico has this from the official LA Timeselection blog:

The Associated Press reported this evening and an Obama spokeswoman confirmed that the Chicago-based campaign is pulling its 50-some staffers out of the heavily Republican state full of embittered small towns and shipping the workers east to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where the Democrat’s prospects seem brighter and closer.

. . . .

The abandonment of at least one Midwestern state by Obama comes as a new AP poll indicates that race could play a significant role in deciding a close national election. (See video.) Some experts estimate the first African American candidate of a major party might be as much as 6 percentage points more ahead if he wasn’t black.

Oh, and you're a crazed loon if you don't believe the press is fair and objective.

Uh, no. See, the thing is, we only do the election thing once. Barack Obama (or anyone else for that matter) is got "given" a "normal vote" which he can either win or lose.

Now, if you want to say the polling may be more inaccurate as a predictor as some people are inflating Obama's numbers because they are afraid of being thought a "racist" if they say they support someone else...well then you may have something. But Obama has no moral claim to a percentage of the vote based upon polling data.

I've often heard MSM types and other assorted Democrats lament that they cannot understand how the presidential race could be so close. After all, they have such an "appealing" candidate. The answer is, of course, that their candidate really isn't that appealing at all, but they choose to believe otherwise. It's like a mother who repeatedly tells her gangly misshapen son that he is not a horrifying freak, but is instead really "handsome." After awhile maybe even she believes it.

Why is Obama so vapid and hesitant and gutless? Why, to put it another way, does he risk going into political history as a dusky Dukakis? Well, after the self-imposed Jeremiah Wright nightmare, he can't afford any more militancy, or militant-sounding stuff, even if it might be justified. His other problems are self-inflicted or party-inflicted as well. He couldn't have picked a gifted Democratic woman as his running mate, because he couldn't have chosen a female who wasn't the ever-present Sen. Clinton, and so he handed the free gift of doing so to his Republican opponent (whose own choice has set up a screech from the liberals like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas). So the unquantifiable yet important "atmospherics" of politics, with all their little X factors, belong at present to the other team.

The Dukakis comparison is, of course, a cruel one, but it raises a couple more questions that must be faced. We are told by outraged Democrats that many voters still believe, thanks to some smear job, that Sen. Obama is a Muslim. Yet who is the most famous source of this supposedly appalling libel (as if an American candidate cannot be of any religion or none)? Absent any anonymous whispering campaign, the person who did most to insinuate the idea in public—"There is nothing to base that on. As far as I know"—was Obama's fellow Democrat and the junior senator from New York. It was much the same in 1988, when Al Gore brought up the Dukakis furlough program, later to be made infamous by the name Willie Horton, against the hapless governor of Massachusetts who was then his rival for the nomination.

I see where Hitchens is going here, but he misses the more obvious point by getting bogged down in the fine details of campaign strategy. This question isn't "Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant and gutless?" The question is "Why would the Democrats pick someone who is so obviously vapid, hesitant and gutless?"

If Sarah Palin got a speeding ticket in 1991, do you think that wouldn't be splashed across the front page of the Times? My bet is even if there is something there the media will make a conscious decision to ignore anything Obama does until after the election.

Of all of the cultural figures that populated my adolescent worldview (musicians, baseball players, and actors mostly) there is only one about whom my admiration has never lessened; Bill Cosby. As I got older I began to appreciate Cosby's talent more and more, even when I wasn't thrilled about much of the material involved, like The Cosby Show. Seeing Cosby perform his comedy live is a joy, and if you have never gone before I envy you. You still have the chance to experience the joy of it for the first time.

However, it isn't only Cosby's gigantic comedic gifts that have impressed me so much over the years. His public persona, which he has used to promote a variety of causes over the years, is also impressive. I'm sure I would find plenty of things to disagree with him about, but his thoughtful intelligence and humanity always trumped all else. Cosby can be tough without rancor or bitterness; he can point out problems without bitchiness; and he is someone who is as eager to learn as he is to teach.

Two-year-old Warren Hund giggled shyly as Bill Cosby hunched down — inches from the boy's face — singing a song from the comedian's hit television show "Little Bill."

Warren didn't know much about the comic icon, but the boy recognized goofy when he saw it.

The funnyman paraded through Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center on Saturday afternoon to visit sick kids and make them laugh.

But his message was far more serious.

If a child has something wrong, Cosby said at a news conference, and if the child comes from a family that cannot afford treatment, the child can come to the hospital. "That's what we're raising the money for," Cosby said.

Cosby, 71, was in St. Louis for a fund-raiser Saturday night at the Blanche Touhill Performing Arts Center. The hospital expected to raise more than $500,000 to establish an endowment that will pay a new pediatrician's salary.

Now, in a sense I'm sure this was not such a big deal for Cosby. He has done scores of these types of shows before, but I believe that is part of what marks him as so special. This is his ordinary, and we are all the beneficiaries.

When Barack Obama first began campaigning in New Hampshire in early 2007, many voters swooned. We watched him speak to retirees in Claremont one snowy February day that year. Not a single voter we talked with before he spoke planned to vote for him. Afterwards, many said they would. The word that spontaneously came from the lips of multiple attendees: sincere. They couldn’t remember a politician who spoke with such sincerity, they said. And many of them had been voting since World War II.

We wonder what those same voters think of Obama’s sincerity now. In the past few weeks, Obama has thrown so many false accusations against John McCain that just keeping track of them has become difficult. And these aren’t innocent errors. They are deliberate distortions of the sort Obama has always said he reviles.

On Thursday, Obama said of McCain, “He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might have lessened the current crisis.” That’s entirely untrue.

As The Washington Post pointed out in an editorial on Friday, McCain in fact has supported many new regulations of financial institutions, including some that Obama opposed. “In 2006, he pushed for stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — while Mr. Obama was notably silent,” The Post wrote.

Obama attacked McCain for having a top financial advisor who supported a deregulation bill a few years ago. Yet two top Obama financial advisors, with whom he met on Friday to help him form his response to the current troubles on Wall Street, supported the same bill, which was signed by President Clinton.

Also last week, Obama released a Spanish-language ad that portrayed McCain as anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic and tried to link him to immigration policies that were not his own as well as some choice Rush Limbaugh quotes that appeared to insult Mexicans.

Anyone who has followed the immigration debate knows that McCain is the most pro-immigration Republican on the national stage and that he is not in the least anti-Hispanic. To pull quotes from Rush Limbaugh, who has completely different immigration views than McCain and who opposed him on that issue for years (and still does) is completely disingenuous. The ad is so bad that even The New York Times called it “misleading.”

Obama’s campaign also accused McCain of lying when McCain’s campaign ran an ad saying that Obama supported sex education for kindergarteners. But the bill in question, which Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate, did indeed change state law to allow sex education for kindergarteners.

Obama has said that he won’t attack John McCain’s motives, only his policies. But he has repeatedly attacked McCain’s motives, suggesting that he has been bought off by oil companies and lobbyists.

Obama’s greatest strength as a candidate, aside from his oratorical skill, has long been his apparent sincerity and decency. Voters attracted to him think of him as that rarest of things: an honest politician. He has claimed himself that he would never engage in the sort of deceptive politicking that he says has tainted Washington for so long.

Yet here he is violating his own professed standards. This is not the Barack Obama so many voters in New Hampshire and elsewhere thought they knew. But it is the real Barack Obama. For despite his rhetoric, he is in fact campaigning so dishonestly that even The Washington Post and The New York Times have called him on it. Which means that he is in practice no different from those regular politicians against whom his entire campaign has been built.

This is spot on, except for one thing. The problem with Obama is not that he is a hypocrite who does not live up to his own rhetoric. The problem is Obama is demonstrably worse than "politics as usual." Whenever challenged in any way, shape or form the Obama response is invariably irrational. Thus, anyone who questioned Obama electability during the Democratic primary was a "racist," up to and including former Vice Presidential candidates or Presidents. The selection of Sarah Palin by John McCain has unleashed a hate fest I can find no analogy to in American political discourse. (Although it bears many of the same hallmarks as the "sophisticated anti-Semitism" practiced by many prominent intellectuals in 1930's Germany.) Indeed, the mass organization of "true believers" into shout down squads, whose only job is to intimidate the opposition into silence, mark a serious deterioration of civic virtue and responsibility in this society.

I work in an overwhelmingly "progressive" environment, where I have certainly learned to keep my political beliefs to myself...but I listen to whats being said around me. I have only seen one thing in common, one primary motivating factor, in the core of Obama supporters, and that is hate. There is no touchy-feely "hopey changey" attitude here, at all.

Go over to The Anchoress for a fantastic post on the economic meltdown and how we got here. It's a good piece to read in and of itself, but it also is a jumping off point to other worthwhile resources. It proved to be so much more worthwhile and informative than sitting down with my Sunday paper that I'm beginning to wonder why I pay for the thing.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

It certainly seems to be moving in that direction. First, you have a Democratic candidate whose (Barry come lately) protestations of admiration for Israel sound about as convincing as if they came from Jesse Jackson, not to mention his stated desire to pull up a chair and have a cozy little chat with Hamas.

Jews need to wake up. This is no longer your father’s Democratic Party. It’s fun to stick one’s tongue out at Republicans for being Christian and nasty warmongers, but guess which party’s core believes that Israel is the real problem? Guess which party wants to concede ground to Islamo-fascism? Guess which party will stand by while whichever Muslim knucklehead drops a dirty bomb in Tel Aviv?

If Israel falls, Jews everywhere will be in danger, and not from Christians. When the hammer falls, Jews in the US will be in danger as well, and the MoveOn and Daily Kossacks won’t help. The Jews among them will be forced to choose between being a kapo or a victim. Don’t kid yourselves, foolish Jews. Anyone who thinks it’s more important for Hillary Clinton to appear at a rally against Ahmadimjihadi than an actual candidate for Vice President of the US is no friend of Jews. Wake up.

The implication is clear. Democrats are acting as if the relationship between themselves and Jewish voters is a one-way street. "Give us your vote and we'll take a notice of your concerns if it is convenient. But don't hold your breath." Habit has been enough to get Jewish voters to overlook the increasing tendency of prominent Democrats to side with radical Palestinian movements (e.g. Jimmy Carter's zeal in defining Israel as an "apartheid state"), but even well worn habits will erode.

One must witness the Sarah Palin spectacle in person, because this clearly isn't something you can appreciate by staring at a couple of clips on the 10 o'clock news.

This is the woman New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called "Napoleon in bunny boots," who MSNBC's Chris Matthews says is an "empty vessel."

The person who introduced Joe Biden the other day called Palin "a bucket of fluff."

Dick Cheney in a dress, that's what they're calling Palin, har-har-har. There are a million of them like that.

On Thursday, the woman who turned a sure-fire Barack Obama election sweep into a nail-chewer came to Iowa. Along with some smiling white-haired guy, name of John McCain.

Yeah, yeah, some of the 4,000 or so Iowans who jammed a Cedar Rapids campaign rally wanted to hear what the Republican presidential candidate had to say about this and that. But don't kid yourself. This was a "see Sarah" crowd.

Carlson seems to pick up on the main reason Palin was picked, i.e. to shore up the connection between the base and John McCain. The stuff about Palin attracting "Hillary voters" was always a bit of a stretch. She may attract some, especially those turned into one issue voters by the sheer cynicism of the Obama campaign, but that isn't the import of the Palin appeal.

Carlson continues:

These people - not Palin - are the ones who have truly flummoxed the political opposition and media. Rubes, these folks are called. Uneducated dopes who can't grasp the fact the governor of Alaska is not qualified - is not fit - to be vice president.

These poor, misguided, uninformed and, scariest of all, likely voters, are reminded eight times a day on the news and in the papers that Palin is no Biden. What don't they get? Some of them actually seem to - horrors - like and respect the Republican nominee for vice president.

I mingled here Thursday and asked why, starting with Linda Clifton of Cedar Rapids, the first person I saw in the parking lot.

"I wasn't excited at all about McCain, and I was ready to leave the Republican Party," said Clifton, 56. "Then he picked Sarah. That did it for me. She's smart, she's successful and is raising a family. She has character. She's me. She's every woman I ever worked with."

Micky Anderson of Bettendorf said she and her husband might have driven to Cedar Rapids for a McCain event. Palin's appearance guaranteed their trip.

"I went wild when he picked Sarah," said the 58-year-old Anderson. "I juggled three kids and work, with my husband's help. She's doing it, and I think she's amazing."

Emily Davis and Katie Lancia of Coralville walked past, each of them holding a small child. Both are stay-at-home moms. Both love Palin.

"Not qualified?" said the 31-year-old Lancia. "I'm amazed when I hear that. She's more qualified than Barack Obama."

"She's exciting," said Davis, 28. "She has such motivation and drive. I love what she stands for."

Jason and Bethany Geiken drove over from Des Moines with their 3-month-old son, Malachi, to have a look at the Republican ticket. The Geikens said they probably would have voted for McCain.

"Grudgingly voted for him," said Jason, 27, who works for an insurance company. "I'm happy to vote for him now. Palin is a reformer and she's from outside the Beltway. She's not one more senator. She made the difference to us."

"She juggles the family and her profession," said Bethany, 24. "She really impresses me."

I'm not sure I see much of Clinton's core constituency in that run down, but I sure do see the types of voters McCain needs to attract/enthuse for a successful election day. For some reason this has driven legions of the press to bouts of apoplexy. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either.)

Democrats and the swells in the press keep throwing punches. The average folks, so many of them women, keep cheering. They relate to this mother of five, who diapers a kid with one hand and runs a state with the other.

The critics don't understand the excitement, and it's driving them crazy.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

I was interviewed earlier this week by Mark Glaser, author of PBS's MediaShift blog, about an interesting situation involving an "embedded" student blogger at New York University, my alma mater. Because the case involves the intersection of new media (like blogs and Twittering) and classroom speech, I thought it would be interesting to briefly examine here on The Torch.First, here's the story.

Prior to the start of fall classes, Glaser asked NYU undergrad Alana Taylor if she would be interested in writing reports for MediaShift about her experiences taking new media classes in NYU's Journalism Department. Taylor agreed, and submitted her first post....

Once posted on MediaShift, Taylor's critique quickly found a wider audience, and Professor Quigley wasn't pleased. In an individual meeting with Taylor, Quigley told her that she should have asked permission to blog about the class, and that she violated the privacy of Quigley and her fellow students by writing about the classroom experience. Quigley also informed Taylor that she had violated basic journalism ethics, and that she was not to write, blog, or Twitter about the class in the future.

Quigley is a dipshit who ought to be fired by NYU for gross incompetence. I'm sorry, but only the dumbest of morons could claim to have an expectation of privacy in a classroom setting. I've heard of spousal privilege, doctor/patient privilege, lawyer/client privilege etc., but this is the first time I've heard of "teacher and upwards of 150 students" privilege. No much privacy expectation exists, so this is nothing other than an attempt at censorship carried out under the auspices of a School of Journalism.

The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.

Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven't ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.

One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that ``no one knows what to do'' at the moment.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Heard the hysteria about ice melt in the arctic? Well, it turns out that with the "melting season" officially over there is actually 9% more ice than last year. Hmmm...what do you call it when there is more of something than there was before??? Oh yeah, that's right, its called an increase.

Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared! This is confirmed by a plot of actual global average temperatures from the best available source, weather satellite data that shows there has been NO net global warming since the satellites were first launched in 1979.

If you're a member of the Church of Gorology never fear! Just keep repeating the mantra "All cooling is consistent with AGW...All cooling is consistent with AGW...ohmmmmm." And don't forget to tithe!

The battered reputation of Josh Howard took another hit this week when an online video surfaced showing the Dallas Mavericks forward disrespecting the national anthem.

In a video posted on YouTube, Howard is shown on a football field at a charity flag football game. As the national anthem plays in the background, Howard approaches a camera and says: "The Star Spangled Banner is going on right now. I don't even celebrate that shit. I'm black." [expletive uncensored]

Yes, it's a terrible country that would give a guy like Josh Howard millions of dollars to play a game.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has launched a new Spanish-language TV ad that seeks to paint Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as anti-immigrant, even tying the Republican to his longtime conservative talk-radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh.

As first reported by the Washington Post, Obama's ad features a narrator saying: "They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with…the intolerance…they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much."

The screen then shows these two quotes from Limbaugh:

“…stupid and unskilled Mexicans”—Rush Limbaugh

"You shut your mouth or you get out!”—Rush Limbaugh

The narrator then says, “John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote…and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain…more of the same old Republican tricks.”

There are some real factual problems with this ad, which is titled “Dos Caras,” or two faces.

First of all, tying Sen. McCain – especially on the issue of immigration reform – to Limbaugh is unfair.

Limbaugh opposed McCain on that issue. Vociferously. And in a larger sense, it’s unfair to link McCain to Limbaugh on a host of issues since Limbaugh, as any even occasional listener of his knows, doesn’t particularly care for McCain.

Second, the quotes of Limbaugh’s are out of context. [emphasis added]

Yep. You read that right. The ad is so dishonest that ABC News' Jake Tapper felt the need to defend Rush Limbaugh.

Obviously, Obama must believe Spanish speaking Americans are so stupid they will believe anything.

Couple this with the hacking of the Palin family email accounts and you are witnessing a campaign with no sense of ordinary common human decency.

(Do I know for a fact the Obama camp was involved in the hackery? No. But show me where the Obama campaign has drawn any hard and fast line between the acceptable and unacceptable before? Any group of people that could maintain that Geraldine Ferraro was a racist is capable of just about anything.)

John McCain set off a firestorm yesterday when he said, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," while also noting that these are tough times. McCain, for whom the economy is not comfortable terrain, was simply repeating a formulation he's used before. In August, he told radio host Laura Ingraham, "I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong. We've got terribly big challenges now, whether it be housing or employment or so many of the other—health care. It's very, very tough times."

Gee, so this is a "gaffe" how exactly? When are out fundamentals not sound according to Gross?

Are the fundamentals sound? Was McCain right, or hopelessly rosy-eyed? It depends on which fundamentals you want to emphasize. There are times when all the fundamentals are unsound, as was the case in 1931. And there are times when all the fundamentals appear to be sound, as was the case in the mid- to late 1990s. [emphasis of the really, really moronic parts mine]

Oh, how stupid does this moron believe we all are? The economy is only sound when we are going through economic boom times? This displays such a shocking ignorance of economics, history, and plain old common sense as to be unbelievable, even for this media environment. To claim that in last 80 years the economy has only been sound for 3-4 years in the 1990's shows a shocking level of intellectual dishonesty.

So, when you see something written by Daniel Gross feel free to ignore it. He has proven beyond doubt that his intentions are not honorable.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay....

If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

So, was this something McCain dreamed up in the last couple of weeks? Well, no. It turns out McCain called for action back in 2005.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has canceled an appearance at a New York rally next week after organizers blindsided her by inviting Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, aides to the senator said Tuesday.

Several American Jewish groups plan a major rally outside the United Nations on Sept. 22 to protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Organizers said Tuesday that both Clinton, who nearly won the Democratic nomination for president, and Palin, Republican candidate John McCain's running mate, are expected to attend.

That would have set up a closely scrutinized and potentially explosive pairing in the midst of a presidential campaign, one in which the New York senator is campaigning for Democratic nominee Barack Obama while Palin actively courts disappointed Clinton supporters.

Clinton aides were furious. They first learned of the plan to have both Clinton and Palin appear when informed by reporters.

"Her attendance was news to us, and this was never billed to us as a partisan political event," said Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines. "Sen. Clinton will therefore not be attending." [emphasis added on the really stupid part]

I guess being a Clinton "spokesman" means not being the brightest bulb in the pack. Since when is a showing of bipartisan support for Israel defined as "partisan"? While we are at it, how is only having members from one political party, and deliberately keeping members of other parties away, a sign of a non-partisan event?

Reines had better check a dictionary because "partisan" doesn't mean what he thinks it means.

QandO had a great post about the role congessional Democrats had in the present financial markets fiasco. When the Bush administration proposed new regulatory oversight over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae the Democrats said "no way."

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Yeah! Who could have forseen the need for added regulation back then??

Gov. Sarah Palin may eventually have said "no thanks" to a federally funded Bridge to Nowhere.

But a bridge to her hometown of Wasilla, that's a different story.

A $600 million bridge and highway project to link Alaska's largest city to Palin's town of 7,000 residents is moving full speed ahead, despite concerns the bridge could worsen some commuting and threaten a population of beluga whales.

Where to begin? For starters, as the folks over at Powerline point out, the claim that the bridge goes to Wasilla is an out-and-out lie:

Note the location of Wasilla in the upper right portion of the map.

The Knik Arm Bridge is not, obviously, a "bridge to [Palin's] hometown of Wasilla," nor does it "link Alaska's largest city to Palin's town of 7,000 residents." Wasilla is many miles away from the proposed bridge, and, in fact, the quickest route from Wasilla to Anchorage may be the existing one, even if the proposed new bridge is built. The Associated Press just made up those inflammatory statements to try to prejudice you against Sarah Palin and to help the Obama campaign.

Here is the image with the proposed bridge on it:

Now, if you use Google maps to calculate driving distances from Wasilla you get the following results:

Now, obviously, they could improve road access to the new bridge, but, even then, it will in no way lessen the distance from Wasilla to Anchorage. And, as anyone who has lived in a town next to a major river could tell you, if you have a choice between driving a route across a bridge or one that doesn't use a bridge, you'll take the land route every time as bridges invariably cause backups.

On this basis alone the AP story is demonstably false and ought to be retracted with an apology.

But the duplicity continues:

The governor initially championedthe first so-called Bridge to Nowhere, which would have connected the southeastern Alaska town of Ketchikan to its airport on nearby Gravina Island. She later pulled the plug on the project after it became a national symbol of extravagant federal spending. [emphasis added]

Before, Palin was presented as not having objections to the Gravina bridge when she was campaigning for Governor; now the AP is presenting Palin as a driving force behind the legislation which is a distortion so far removed from the facts it is laughable.

Well, it would be laughable if it were not an attempt to smear one political party for the benefit of another.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Just looked at Memeorandum (4:10PM Eastern) and of the 48 major headlines listed 29 of them were either pro-Obama or anti-McCain/Palin, 13 were neutral (or unknown from the headline itself), and a mere 6 were pro-McCain/Palin. There were none that were anti-Obama.

Sorry folks, I ain't buying it. Oh, not because of the existence of Islamic fundamentalism (there are nutjobs everywhere), but because of stories, like this one, concerning "main stream" Islam: Why is this 'Conservative' News?

It appears that the following story is “conservative” news or, even worse, “Christian” news.

I cannot figure out why this is the case. Readers, perhaps you can enlighten me.

It seems, to me, that this is a story that combines elements of women’s rights and freedom of religion, both of which are strong themes in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Old-fashioned liberals used to have strong feelings about these kinds of human-rights issues.

Here is a short report from a Christian news source. Notice, however, that the report originated with mainstream-media sources in the region:

Reports are coming in of increasing persecution of Christian believers in the Saudi Arabia. A Saudi man recently cut the tongue of his daughter and burned her to death for converting to Christianity, according to a report by the United Arab Emirates-based Gulf News. The victim frequently wrote on various Web site blogs about her conversion from Islam. It is believed that she converted to Christianity after learning about the faith on the Internet and through Christian media.

The girl’s father is an employee of Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the arm of the government that enforces the nation’s prohibition of Christianity and conversion to Christianity. Sources close to the victim said that the father was being investigated for “honour killing” rather than murder, Gulf News reported. Shariah-ruled Saudi Arabia, where all Christian worship is forbidden, is ranked No. 2 on Open Doors’ 2007 World Watch List of nations where Christians are persecuted for their faith.

Under the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, apostasy is punishable by death if the accused does not recant.

The answer of course is ideological. The media would rather not cover human rights abuses done by Muslims against Jew or, especially, Christians because they have a world view that requires their myopia. For some reason, for these people, standing silent while human beings are butchered because of their faith is counted as tolerance.

Of course it isn't "tolerance." In fact, the silence of the media is so damning they are close to being accomplices.

Large segments of Islam are fundamentally at war with the Human Rights Conventions embraced by most of the rest of the world. This is happening not only in the villages and caves of Afghanistan, but also in the spiritual heartland of Mecca, and the cities and towns of Europe and North America, where the murdering of children is held up as something "honorable" instead of being recognized as the barbarism it very clearly is.

Sarah Palin? Can’t keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant.

Anyone who advocates this as their campaign strategy is my moral superior how exactly?

Notice how a Nazi style eugenics is assumed? Real interesting, in a "Do they really want to be that much like Dr. Mengele" kinda way.

* The Full Text Of S.B. 99 Included Changes That Would Offer Sex Education To Children Beginning In Kindergarten. “Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.” (S.B. 99: Illinois Senate Health And Human Services Committee, Passed, 7-4-0, 3/6/03, Obama Voted Yea) -[emphasis mine-admin]

You follow the link and read the guideline Obama voted for, you find the following prescribed for 5-8 year olds.

Each body part has a correct name and a specific function.• A person’s genitals, reproductive organs, and genes determine whether the person is male or female.• A boy/man has nipples, a penis, a scrotum, and testicles.• A girl/woman has breasts, nipples, a vulva, a clitoris, a vagina, a uterus, and ovaries.• Some sexual or reproductive organs, such as penises and vulvas, are external or on the outside of the body while others, such as ovaries and testicles, are internal or inside the body.• Both boys and girls have body parts that feel good when touched.• Bodies change as children grow older.• Puberty is a time of physical and emotional change that happens as children become teenagers.• People are able to have children only after they have reached puberty.• Men and women have reproductive organs that enable them to have a child.• Men and women have specific cells in their bodies (sperm cells and egg cells) that enable them toreproduce.• Reproduction requires that a sperm and egg join.• Vaginal intercourse – when a penis is placed inside a vagina – is the most common way for a sperm and egg to join.• When a woman is pregnant, the fetus grows inside her body in her uterus.• A woman can be pregnant with more than one fetus at a time.• Babies usually come out of a woman’s body through an opening called a vagina.• Some babies are born by an operation called a Caesarian Section.• A woman’s breasts can provide milk for a baby.• Not all men and women have children.• People who cannot have children may choose to adopt.• Individual bodies are different sizes, shapes, and colors.• All bodies are equally special, including those that are disabled.• Differences make us unique.• Good health habits, such as eating well and exercising, can improve the way a person feels abouthis or her body.• Each person can be proud of his/her body.• Human beings can love people of the same gender and people of another gender.• Some people are heterosexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with someoneof another gender.• Some people are homosexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with someoneof the same gender.• Homosexual men and women are also known as gay men and lesbians.• People deserve respect regardless of who they are attracted to.• Making fun of people by calling them gay (e.g. “homo,” “fag,” “queer”) is disrespectful and hurtful.• Biological sex refers to whether a person has male or female genitals and/or chromosomes.• Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or a combination of these.• Gender identity is just one part of who a person is.• Gender roles refer to the way society expects people to behave based on their biological sex.• Making fun of people for not acting the way society expects them to based on their biological sex is disrespectful and hurtful.• A family consists of two or more people who care for eachother in many ways.• There are different kinds of families.• Children may live with one or more parents or caregivers including biological parents, step-parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, friends, or other combinations of adults.• All members of a family may not live in the same place.• The makeup of individual families may change over time.• Each member of a family has something unique to contribute.• Families have rules to help members live together.• Family members take care of each other.• Many adults may help care for children.• Family members show love for each other.• Change in a family may make its members happy or sad.• When a baby is born or a child is adopted into a family, some parts of life will change for family members.• People can have many friends or just a few.• A person can have different types of friends.• Friends spend time together and get to know each other.• Friendships depend on honesty.• Friends respect and appreciate each other.• Friends can feel angry with each other and still be friends.• Friends sometimes hurt each other’s feelings.• Friends forgive each other.• Friends share feelings with each other.• Friends can help each other.• Friends can be male and female.• Friends can be younger and older.• Love means having deep and warm feelings about oneself and others.• People can experience different types of love.• People express love differently to their parents, families, and friends.• People can experience different loving relationships throughout their lives.• Dating is when two people who are romantically attracted to each other spend their free time together.• When children become teenagers, they spend more time with their friends and may begin to date.• Some adults, including single parents, may date.• Two people may decide to marry or make a lifetime commitment to each other because they love each other and want to share their lives with each other.• Many men and women will marry.• Many people live in lifetime committed relationships, even though they may not be legally married.• Two people of the same gender can live in loving, lifetime committed relationships.• Most people who marry intend the relationship to be lifelong.• People who are married or committed to each other may get divorced or break up if they decide they do not want to be together anymore.• When parents divorce or break up, children may live with one or both parents or with other family members.• Divorce and break-ups are usually difficult for families.• After a divorce or break-up, parents and children continue their lives in new ways and can be happy again.• Children are not able to get their separated or divorced parents back together regardless of how much they want that to happen.• Children are not to blame for their parents’ separations or divorces.• Many people want to be parents.• Raising children is an adult role.• Raising children requires great effort, resources, time, and patience.• People who have children need to provide for them.• Raising children can be a wonderful experience.• Adults become parents in several ways: having biological children, adopting children, becoming astep-parent, or becoming a guardian or foster parent.• People who have or adopt children are responsible for loving and taking care of them.• Parents who adopt, love their children as much as biological parents love theirs.• Values are strong feelings or beliefs about important issues.• Individuals and families have a variety of values.• Children learn most of their values from parents, other family members, community, cultural and religious teachings, and their peers.• Everybody has to make decisions.• Small children make many decisions, such as what clothes to wear, which toys to play with, or who to be friends with.• Children need help from adults to make some decisions.• All decisions have consequences, positive and/or negative.• Decision-making is a skill that can be improved.• People communicate in many ways.• People speak, write, sign, or show how they feel with facial expressions and body language.• Communication is necessary in human relationships.• Everyone, including children, has rights.• Telling trusted people about one’s feeling and needs is acceptable.• Asking is often the first step to getting what one wants or needs.• Children sometimes have to do things they do not want to do because their parents or other adults say so.• Negotiation requires give and take on the part of all people involved.• Good negotiation can enhance relationships and friendships.• Sharing is a type of negotiation.• Family members and friends usually try to help one another.• If parents cannot help, one can ask another family member, a teacher, religious leader, guidance counselor, a friend’s parent, or another trusted adult.• Most children are curious about their bodies.• Bodies can feel good when touched.• Touching and rubbing one’s own genitals to feel good is called masturbation.• Some boys and girls masturbate and others do not.• Masturbation should be done in a private place.• People often kiss, hug, touch, and engage in other sexual behaviors with one another to show caring and to feel good.• Both girls and boys may discover that their bodies feel good when touched.• Girls and boys need to take care of their bodies during childhood and adolescence.• Like other body parts, the genitals need care.• Some people have children and others do not.• Each family can decide how many children to have, if any.• A pregnant woman must take extra care of her health with exercise, healthy foods, and frequent visits to her healthcare provider.• Most babies are born healthy.• Smoking, drinking alcohol, and using other drugs can hurt a fetus before it is born.• Sometimes women become pregnant when they do not want to be or are unable to care for a child.• Sexually transmitted diseases are caused by germs such as bacteria and viruses.• There are many types of sexually transmitted diseases.• People who do not engage in certain behaviors do not get STDs.• A small number of children are born with STDs that they get from their mothers during pregnancy or birth.• The most common ways for a person to get an STD is to participate in sexual behavior or share a needle with another person who is already infected with an STD.• Children who find needles on the ground should not touch them and should tell an adult.• HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus.• Once a person gets HIV, he/she will have it for the rest of his/her life.• HIV causes AIDS, which stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.• People who have HIV or AIDS are more at risk of getting infections, diseases, and other illnesses.• People with HIV who work hard to stay healthy can live for a very long time.• There are medicines that people with HIV or AIDS can take to help them stay healthier and live longer.• People who do not engage in certain behaviors do not get HIV or AIDS.• A small number of children are born with HIV that they get from their mothers during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding,• The most common ways for a person to get HIV is to participate in sexual behavior or share a needle with another person who is already infected with HIV.• A person cannot become infected with HIV by being around, touching, or hugging someone who has HIV or AIDS.• HIV is found in the blood of infected people; it is never a good idea to touch another person’s blood.• Children who find needles on the ground should not touch them and should tell an adult.• One’s body belongs to oneself.• There are parts of one’s body that are considered to be private, including one’s mouth, nipples, breasts, chest, penis, scrotum, vagina, vulva, and buttocks.• No one should touch the private parts of a child’s body except for health reasons or to clean them.• Children should not touch the private parts of other people’s bodies.• Child sexual abuse is when someone touches the private parts of a child’s body without a health or hygiene reason.• Sexual abuse can also occur when someone asks a child to touch the private parts of his/her body.• Both boys/men and girls/women can be sexually abused.• Everyone, including children, has the right to tell others not to touch their body when they do not want to be touched.• If a child experiences unwanted or uncomfortable touching, he/she should tell a trusted adult, evenif he/she was told to keep it a secret.• Children can be sexually abused by a stranger or by someone they know.• A child is never at fault if a person – even a family member – touches him/her in a way that is wrong or uncomfortable.• If a stranger tries to get a child to go with him/her, the child should run and tell a parent, teacher, neighbor, or other adult.• Most people would never abuse children.• Girls and boys have many similarities and a few differences.• Some people may expect or demand that boys and girls behave in certain ways, but this is beginning to change.• Both women and men can be involved and caring parents.• Boys and girls can do the same chores at home.• Men and women are capable of doing almost all the same jobs.• Some men and women may be told that certain jobs and tasks are only for women or only for men, but this is beginning to change.• Some families go to a church, mosque, or synagogue to worship; some families do not.• Religions teach people how to love each other, how to behave, and what is right and wrong.• Different religions may promote similar or different values.• Individuals differ in the way they think, act, look, and live.• Talking about differences helps people understand each other better.• The belief that all members of a group will behave the same way is called a stereotype.• Some information on television, in the movies, in books and magazines, on the radio, and on theInternet is true and some is not.• Some commercials, television shows, movies, and magazines make people and things look differentor better than they really are.• Some television programs, movies, and websites are not appropriate for young children.

Yeah, see. It only covered "good and bad touching." Except for the bits about intercourse, and masturbation...oh and the stuff about gay marriage. Did I forget to mention the priming for the "trans-gender" agenda?

I realize that much of the stuff listed above is benign, but Obama's characterization of it is ludicrous. From my point of view the worst thing about it is how politicized it is. "Comprehensive Sex Education" seems to means "Let's make little liberal Democrats." What this provides is a set of values that children are asked/made to accept outside of the family/church nexus. As the guidelines make clear, families and churches have varied values. Only these "sex guidelines" (and the people teaching them) are treated as if they were in possession of the unquestioned truth.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Uh...not so much. It turns out ABC deliberately edited Palin's responses in a deceptive manner in order to make the Alaskan Governor look bad. All of the following was edited out of the broadcast:

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

The following was also excised:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We’ve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

Gee, the Obama campaign certainly are not very good at the whole internet thing. It's amazing what one can find there:

“In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.”

John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain's long Washington career.

The new fighting spirit comes as McCain has been gaining in the polls and some Democrats have been expressing concern the Obama campaign has not been aggressive enough.

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

The Obama camp is seriously contending that the injuries McCain endured in the service of his country are A) something to be mocked, and B) disqualifying for the highest office.

This is an unmitigated disaster for Country Club Obama, who was, when he was around the same age as McCain during his POW days, desperately fighting off the munchies after smoking a little too much weed.

Gaius over at Blue Crab Boulevard calls Camp Obama, "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" but that is letting them off too easy. The media has done nothing but bitch about the Republican's vetting process regarding Palin. How can they continue to do that when the Obama campaign is seemingly ignorant about the most rudimentary information concerning their opposition?

The sad truth is, of course, that they are not ignorant about McCain war time injuries, yet they chose to mock him for them all the same.

It's hard to say just when universities ceased to believe that education was a worthwhile mission. But that they have done so is beyond question. Among many signs of this reality is the anxiety to redefine the university's task. After all, educators who no longer expect or demand serious intellectual effort from their students are bound to look elsewhere for ways to justify their existence and that of their institutions. Enter the language of "community engagement," "outreach," "social justice," and "equity" (to name just a few of the terms now used as rallying cries on many campuses).

If anyone has doubts that behind these grand terms lies the degradation of academic life, a look at procedures for recruiting new faculty is a good place to observe the university's priorities. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I teach, a document both sublime and ridiculous advises us how to go about determining if applicants have what it takes to work here. Along with the usual lists of questions that may or may not be asked, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity provides some crucial guidelines in a document titled Supplemental Search Instructions....

Parentheses are used to indicate that one or more of the following words are missing: Minorities, Blacks, Hispanics, Native-American; Women; economically disadvantaged persons; disabled persons; veterans or disabled veterans; homosexuals, gays, lesbians; protected groups; affirmative action groups, etc.

How have you demonstrated your commitment to (____) issues in your current position?

Which of your achievements in the area of equity for (____) gives you the most satisfaction?

How would you demonstrate your concern for equity for (____) if you were hired?

In your opinion, what are the three major problems for (____) on your campus?

How are general issues in higher education related to (____) issues? What is the link?

Describe activities--include articles, interviews, and speeches--in which you have taken part that demonstrate a public commitment to equity.

In your current position, have you ever seen a (____ ) treated unfairly? How would/did you handle it?

In your current position, what is your relationship to the affirmative action officer? Have you ever sought his or her help in recruiting?

Outrageous. Simply outrageous. If you do not answer in such a way that conforms to the political sensibilities of the existing faculty, well then that just shows you are not the "correct person" for the job. That such a document exists is an ethical nightmare, and potentially a legal quagmire for a state institution.

Notice, you are asked to prove your committement to "equity" but not "freedom."

I guess, freedom simply isn't important. No place proves that more readily than the modern university.

When Charlie Gibson took a statement out of context in an attempt to trip up Sarah Palin the other day, and then got called for it, they did what any reputable news organization would do; they removed the contextin the interview itself to make Gibson's question seem fairer.

"The willful omission of one or more words so the meaning of the statement is no longer understood but that the statement suits the needs of the writer in launching an ad hominem attack whether or not the construction is truthful or grammatically complete."

I guess the "truth" is whatever the media says it is. Reality be damned.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The New Republic are now pretending they know something about hockey (and this somehow means Sarah Palin shouldn't be a VP candidate). Those assholes couldn't explain the icing rule if their lives depended on it.

From now on TNR, stick to things you know well, like publishing fiction as news.

The classic rock band Yes, which was forced to cancel their 40th anniversary tour this year due to the illness of its lead singer, has decided to relaunch the tour with an "understudy" -- a Yes tribute band singer.

Benoit David, who sings in several Yes tribute bands in Montreal, will replace Jon Anderson on the "In the Present" tour, which kicks of Nov. 4 in Ontario, Canada, according to bassist Chris Squire.

There are "several" Yes tribute bands in Montreal alone? I know it gets cold up there, but there has to be something else to do.